Tag Archives: Jar Note Records

That right there is the album art and single for the first widely released Bill Fox record in more than a decade. One Thought Revealed comes out Jan. 17 through Jar Note Records, but you can preorder the CD now.

In one sense, the album is exactly what you’d expect: superb songwriting from someone CMJ once called “one of the most important artists of our day.” It follows the folk-inspired trajectory of Fox’s previous solo records (Shelter from the Smoke, Transit Byzantium), but One Thought Revealed isn’t a rehash of what Fox has proven he can do. It takes chances. There’s a saxophone solo. There’s giant, reverb-drenched snare hits. On “Whithering Soul” you’ll hear some in-the-red organ battling for rank with Fox’s dusty vocals, threatening to steal the song from a desperate man.

Also, file this under awesome but frustrating: In late fall, Gregory Lee Boyd’s tiny Cleveland imprint Treasure Records put out a Bill Fox cassette of previously unreleased material called Before I Went to Harvard. It’s an incredible record that plays like a bunch of Shelter and Byzantium outtakes that should have never been outtakes. (“Chain to Your Heart” could even pass for an early Mice demo.) But there were fewer than 100 released. Boyd is doing another small run, but it’ll sell out soon (or already has), and these songs deserve to be heard by many, many people.

I was able to obtain a copy (thanks Kyle Sowash!), so here’s a shot of the cassette front, which has the track list: Continue reading →

Bill Fox — he of Cleveland’s The Mice, subject of Joe Hagan’s 2007 legend-establishing piece in The Believer and an Overlooked in Ohio alum — hasn’t released any new music since his two decade-old solo albums, Transit Byzantium and Shelter from the Smoke (the latter of which was reissued on vinyl in 2009 by Robert Griffin‘s Scat Records.) Nor has Fox granted an interview in years.

So I didn’t expect much more than a polite decline when I contacted Fox about his upcoming Columbus show on Saturday (details below). To my surprise, he emailed responses to some questions and revealed a new album coming in January:

As far as new material is concerned, there will indeed be an album released in January. The record is titled One Thought Revealed and will appear on Jar Note Records, a label which is being created by [friend and manager] Tim Rossiter. The CD was recorded autumn 2009 into last year with a couple of tracks written right around that time, a couple others around the millennium’s turn and several more 2006/2007, to the best of my recollect.